Three Concrete Proposals for New York City Traffic Relief

This Morning’s Forum: Road Pricing Worked in London. Can It Work in New York?

Three specific proposals to reduce New York City’s ever-increasing traffic congestion emerged from a highly anticipated Manhattan Institute forum this morning. One seeks variable prices on cars driving in to central Manhattan, with express toll lanes and higher parking fees to keep things moving. Another seeks to get rid of tolls on less-congested bridges in car-friendly parts of town and replace them with congestion charging technology in gridlocked, transit-friendly sections of the city. A third plan relies entirely on enforcement of existing parking laws.

"Why do you think construction prices are going up one percent a month?" Wylde asked. It takes crews too long to get to job sites, and once they get there they spend valuable work time waiting for deliveries. "Manufacturing, an industry we have been hemorrhaging" is leaving New York City, in part, because of the difficulty in moving people, supplies and products, Wylde said. "A person who might go to a restaurant" in Manhattan will skip the trip if she’s staring at brake lights.

The problem Wylde says, is "How do you attack traffic without making commercial deliveries or taxis suffer?" London achieved a 15 percent "mode shift" moving approxmately 60,000 commuters from cars to other forms of transportation with its congestion charge. How can New York achieve similar results?

Bruce Schaller, who released a major new study on New York City traffic congestion this morning, presented the first and most detailed answer to that question. He proposed a combined system of congestion charges, highway express lanes and parking reform, emphasizing that the plan can’t just be about getting rid of cars or punishing motorists. It has to be about "making New York the kind of city that New Yorkers want."

Schaller pointed to the results of a Tri-State Transportation Campaign survey showing that 44 percent of New Yorkers feel that congestion pricing is "a good idea" versus 45 percent against. It is worth noting that congestion charging starts with much higher approval ratings in New York City than it had in either London or Stockholm.

Schaller ran focus groups to test three ideas: London-style congestion charging, highway express lanes with tolls, and increased parking fees. He found that New Yorkers, in fact, are quite sophisticated in their thinking about the city’s traffic congestion problem and possible solutions.

Schaller found that there are six factors that drive public reaction to congestion pricing and other solution ideas:

In other words, New York City’s auto dealership-supported tabloid media may not be accurately reflecting New Yorkers’ apparently intelligent and nuanced thinking on local transportation issues when it blares "Traffic Tax!" headlines and reports knee-jerk opposition to congestion charging and other traffic relief measures.

Schaller’s traffic relief charges would apply to anyone crossing the Hudson River, East River or 60th Street boundary into Lower Manhattan. On weekday mornings he would charge $4 to any vehicle entering the zone between 6:30 and 10:00 am. During mid-day, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, all vehicles traveling in or out of the zone would pay $4. Then from 4 pm to 6:30 pm vehicles traveling out of the zone would pay the $4.

Schaller’s highway express lanes would be open to buses, vehicles carrying three or more passengers and any motorist willing to pay a fee. Times and fees would vary depending on congestion and also the State Department of Transportation’s identification of "feasible corridors."

Schaller’s parking plan would apply to commercial districts and selected parking spaces. To show skeptics that usage fees can influence drivers’ behavior, he suggests setting up a pilot project to increase curbside parking rates with, perhaps, rates rising incrementally each hour a car occupies a spot.

To make these ideas politically palatable, Schaller added, all revenues generated by these new plans would need to be plowed back into public transport – especially in underserved areas like Staten Island, Eastern Queens and the Upper East Side.

Next up was transportation guru "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, a former city transportation commissioner. Gridlock Sam immediately went to the root: "Our road pricing stinks." He lamented a regime in which "we toll people going from Queens to Queens or from Staten Island to anywhere" but let drivers "drive across the Queensboro Bridge" without paying tolls (and without funding upkeep on that bridge). His solution: Eliminate all tolls on bridges outside the central business district and impose charges "only where there is congestion and good public transit." This approach could work politically, he said, if it is demonstrably "revenue neutral."

Schwartz also argued that Brooklyn and Queens drivers would benefit from this approach. "People from Brooklyn and Queens would have five river crossings with no tolls. If you go over the Brooklyn Bridge, up the FDR and across the Willis Avenue Bridge, you didn’t set rubber in midtown Manhattan" and so you should pay no tolls, he reckoned. To make any traffic reform effective, Schwartz counseled, "we have to give Brooklyn and Queens a lot." And short of extending subway lines to Maspeth or Gerritsen Beach, the idea of a tight area for fees presumably leaves residents of those areas some latitude.

Councilmember David Weprin, who represents eastern Queens disagreed with Schaller and Schwartz. Since most people who live east of Kew Gardens or north of Forest Hills have to drive at least a mile to get to the subway, he noted, more frequent express bus service would have to complement any changes that made driving into Manhattan more expensive. He warned the audience to consider people who count on driving for their business and cited a statistic: "In London, 62 percent of businesses reported a drop in customers" after congestion charging. What Weprin didn’t say, however, is that the start of congestion charging in London coincided with a nationwide economic recession and a massive Tube construction project that shut down subway service in Central London.

The political gap between Weprin and Schaller seemed large, especially when a former Queens City Council member named Walter McCaffrey, now a lobbyist heading up a newly formed group called the Coalition to Keep New York City Congestion Tax Free, rose from the audience to declare: "A tax is a tax is a tax." But there may be more room for compromise than such rhetoric might suggest. Council member John Liu, who represents Flushing and chairs the Transportation Committee, told me that he would like to see more express bus service in his district. "Nobody wants to pay new charges for anything," he said. "But if, in return, they get something like more express buses." He left the forum at about 9:50 to conduct a hearing at City Hall on express bus service.

So wheels are in motion. Mayor Bloomberg will deliver a major speech within a week outlining his sustainability plan for the city, and advisers say traffic congestion issues will be front and center. Stephen Hammer of Columbia University challenged the panel to push the New York City metro region into a broader conversation about encouraging walking, bicycling and living near mass transit. Road pricing, clearly, is just one cog in the machinery New Yorkers will have to build to make the city livable.

15 thoughts on Three Concrete Proposals for New York City Traffic Relief

To make these ideas politically palatable, Schaller added, all revenues generated by these new plans would need to be plowed back into public transport – especially in underserved areas like Staten Island, Eastern Queens and the Upper East Side.

Councilmember David Weprin … disagreed with Schaller and Schwartz … he noted, more frequent express bus service would have to complement any changes that made driving into Manhattan more expensive.

What part of plowing revenues into public transport – especially in underserved areas – do Councilmember Weprin and the other pro-congestion folks not comprehend?

I hope Liu didn’t get stuck in traffic if he didn’t take the very convenient 2 stop ride on the 4/5 Trains.

What I don’t get about the Eastern Queens contingent is that they seem to focus so much on Manhattan as the center of the Universe. What about creating a real center to your own community and luring businesses out of Manhattan to your area? And if we don’t fix this congestion problem soon, will Manhattan even be the financial/media/etc capital of the world? Then what will your constituents do?

Stop looking to Manhattan like leech looks at a big juicy vein and start thinking about how to create real value in your own backyard.

The thing that struck me as I watched the Queens/Labor/Auto Club contingent speaking at City Hall yesterday is just how incredibly parochial these people are.

Weprin et. al. could give an absolute crap about what automobile dependence does to their city, their country or their planet. Their blocking the box and double parking enforcement proposals show that this group’s interests go no further than saving five minutes on their next car trip to the dry cleaners.

They are far more concerned with exertion of political power than implmentation of sound urban policy.

These guys win their general elections with the kind of margins that Saddam Hussein used to expect. They are hacks and the only thing that can save us from them are term limits.

Democrats such as Werpin represent an interesting aspect of this debate. He is obviously consumed by a status quo mindset, more typical of republicans. Democrats have traditionally prided themselves on openness to new ideas and experimentation. Now we are seeing more and more of them representing the old ways, specifically that motorists should enjoy special entitlements in our society. I will commend him, however, for clearly stating his position rather than dodge the subject to focus on child molesters and druck driving.

How is political party even relevant when you don’t have a challenger in your primary election and you win the general election with something like 95% of the vote? I think Saddam Hussein had closer elections back when he was in office.

Congestion pricing is the most important transit-related policy before the city right now. Here’s the best part of it: When more people ride transit, service improves. When more people drive, service declines. So, encouraging drivers into the “mode shift” will improve the experience of the remaining drivers AND all transit riders. Many people with negative perceptions of transit AT THE OUTSET will find that, post-congestion pricing, the service turns out to be better than they expected.

AD’s point — When more people ride transit, service improves — is important. There’s a time lag, however, before the increased revenues from the higher ridership can get re-invested in improved service. In the short term, which we all know is all-important in NY politics, higher ridership usually just ends up packing people more tightly.

I would formulate it differently: road pricing improves "surface transit" (bus) service instantly, due to the easing in traffic and resulting increase in traffic speeds. It gets better, though: the higher traffic speeds attract more bus passengers, largely from private cars, which eases traffic further, increasing traffic speeds further, attracting still more riders, etc., in a reinforcing "virtuous cycle." Then there’s the further benefit that the greater traffic speeds allow the same number of buses to carry more passengers, which generates economies that can be re-invested in still higher levels of service …

Note that under this formulation, road pricing revenues may not have to be dedicated to improved service (though of course politically it’s wise to promise that they will be … and then to redirect the revenues to transit expansions, once the virtuous cycle outlined above manifests itself).

Needless to say, the Weprins and McCaffreys don’t believe in the virtuous cycle (or claim not to) since they hold that no car trips will be eliminated by road pricing.

Frank, Brent and Joey,
Parochialism? Ha! These are the same parts of town that embraced anti-urban downzoning, which ensures that places like far eastern Queens cannot legally reach transit-supporting residential densities. It also means housing there and in NYC in general becomes more scarce. This is good for existing property owners but bad for anyone who wants to build or buy housing in the city. It forces people who would live in the city into the auto-dependent suburbs. This is bad for a nation dependent on middle-eastern oil, and bad for a world that needs to reduce carbon emissions. Eastern Queens politicians: Parochial? NO WAY.

The big lesson of the moment is that public support for CBD pricing is so high given the small amount of public education on the issue. Higher than in London at the onset of pricing! CBD pricing proponents will have to clearly identify (with handy maps)which neighborhoods would benefit from a reduction in traffic and by how much; and, where the motorists affected by pricing are coming from and what their alternatives are. As Schaller showed earlier this year, 90% of motorist traveling to CBD have easy transit access. But this info is barely starting to emerge from wonk land.

Oh yeah, Columbia guy needs to get out of the Ivory Tower and go talk to the state legislature and City Council, not lecture panelists at a think tank event. Specific proposals, not calls to action, produce change.

Seriously: Where the hell is academic NYC on these issues anyway? Aside from Lee Sander at NYU, where is Columbia, CUNY and the rest of the NYU faculty when it comes to actually engaging in real world public policy on these vital, cross-disciplinary issues? The universities seem to be totally non-existent. It’s all up to non-profit advo groups, engineering firm consultancies and the business community. Pathetic!

I see more cars parked on NYC streets with other State’s plates, than I do see with NY plates and do recognize this is in part b/c people choose to register their vehicles at alternate residences, but to thwart this activity and congestion propose

a NYC resident sticker for all registed vehicles. This sticker would be required for curb-side meter parking and those that are from outside of the city can use public transportation, rent vehicles that have NYC registrations, or park in garages.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Congestion pricing advocate Carolyn Konheim and consulting partner Brian Ketcham are advising the Bloomberg administration to drop its resistance to a congestion pricing Environmental Impact Study. The two say a study is needed to head off "likely 11th hour litigation" aimed at stopping the three-year pilot program from taking effect, a possibility Streetsblog alluded to […]

Foes of congestion pricing marshalled by the Queens Chamber of Commerce held a press conference yesterday at which several politicians from the borough took a stand against the mayor’s plan. According to a press release provided by the chamber, City Council Finance Chair David Weprin called the proposal unnecessary: "I don’t think City Hall understands […]

Car & Travel magazine is published by the Automobile Club of New York, also known as AAA. In addition to being the friendly guys who schlep out at a moment’s notice to tow your broken-down car, the Automobile Club has, over the course of decades, done everything in its power to ensure that nothing like […]

Four veterans of the congestion pricing wars went toe-to-toe at the Museum of the City of New York Wednesday night — the last showdown before the Congestion Mitigation Commission releases its draft proposals today. Taking the stump for pricing were Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for NYC and Michael O’Loughlin of the Campaign for New […]

Free parking, it turns out, isn’t free. A new study by transportation guru Bruce Schaller finds that free parking in Manhattan’s Central Business district is responsible for a significant amount of New York City’s staggering traffic congestion. Schaller’s new study, Congested Streets: The Skewed Economic Incentives to Drive Into Manhattan (PDF), finds that free parking […]

It’s the New Math: a dollar-a-trip rise in the cost of fuel for a car trip to Manhattan is cutting traffic almost as much as Mayor Bloomberg’s eight-dollar toll plan would have done. Too good to be true, right? But that’s the slant of the front-page headline in today’s Times, "Politics Failed, but Fuel Prices […]